[mythtv-users] PC5500 HDTV card & Myth TV & RCN cable

Kevin J. Cummings cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
Mon Jul 23 03:51:45 UTC 2007


To start with, I live 20 miles west of Boston, MA.

OK, I started with a working setup with 2 video capture cards:

PVR-350  <- RCN Analog Cable
pcHDTV 5500 <- OTA

The OTA is attached to my roof antenna, an old beast, at least 30 years
old, maybe older, and missing quite a few of its aluminum arms.

Both cards work reasonably well.  I've been able to record (primarily
from the PVR-350) to .mpg and burn the resulting files to DVD at my
leisure.  But, because the cable going into the 350 has been split at
least 3-4 times before getting to it, the quality isn't that great on
certain channels (like SPIKE-TV, ESPNN, etc).  On others (like SCIFI) is
surprisingly good.

With the pcHDTV 5500, I'm able to pick up more channels digitally than I
can with analog!  One notable exception is I cannot pick up WFXT-DT with
this setup, but I can pick up a number of Providence stations including
WNAC-DT (I cannot pick up WNAC on analog at all here)!  It was a nice
experiment to actually see some HDTV on my computer.  (No, I do not yet
own an HDTV!)

Now, it has come time for my next step, I want to start recording some
of the digital channels on my cable.  In the meantime, I'll swap the
roof antenna to the PVR-350 (works as well as any other analog TV in the
house with an aerial).

Now, here's my initial problem.  After plugging the RCN cable into my
pcHDTV 5500, none of the tools can find any channels!  (Well, almost
none, I'll get to the one that works last).

dtvscan doesn't find anything whether I use the -q option for QAM or
not.  dtvsignal is clueless as well.

I tried adding the card to MythTV as a DVB, and as the pcHDTV directly.
In neither configuration can mythtvsetup scan any channels.  Not in
VSB_8, QAM_64, QAM_128, nor QAM256.  No channels!

Strange, the card was working for me OTA (both with ATSC and NTSC).  So,
I've tried one more test.

On the MythTV wiki, there is a page for channels.conf configurations,
and lo and behold, there is one for RCN-Boston (from July 2006, is it
out of date????), so I copied it to my computer.  No, importing it into
mythtvsetup does *not* help.  *BUT*, I can use the channels.conf with
mplayer!  I can tune *some* of the listed channels, but not others.
Some others have many errors and drop outs.  But a select few channels
seem to play fine (for a short while, then the DT channel's audio/video
seem to lose sync):

CNN (is really NECN)
WSBK
FNC
ESPN
WFXT
WSBKDT
WLVIDT
WBZ
MTV
WCVBDT
WHDHDT

The dropouts might have something to do with this message from mplayer:

Your computer is too slow to play this content.

OK, I admit it.  I'm probably pushing the envelope with this computer,
an AMD2600+ and a GeForce MX400 video card (running the nvidia Xorg
driver) running with 1.5GB of DDR pc2700 ram.  Fedora Core 5,
up-to-date.  MythTV and IVTV drivers installed from ATRpms.  But, I'm
not complaining about my current horsepower, I just want to know HOW DO
I CONFIGURE THIS PCHDTV5500 TO RUN WITH MYTH TV AS MY CABLE INPUT????
How do I get the pcHDTV tools to find the channels?  How do I get MythTV
to find the channels?  I'd be peachy keen happy if I can record the QAM
SDTV channels (and maybe a few HD ones as well!)

Any and all pointers gratefully accepted!

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at rcn.com
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list